Zoé Whitley

Dr Zoé Whitley is an award-winning art historian and curator, and one of the leading voices in contemporary art today. She is the former Director of Chisenhale Gallery in London and has held influential curatorial positions at Tate Modern, Tate Britain, the Hayward Gallery, and the V&A. Whitley co-curated the landmark exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power and its international tour (2017–20), ranked by ARTnews as the fifth most important exhibition of the 2010s, and in 2019 curated the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

She has served on international arts juries including the Turner Prize, Preis der Nationalgalerie Berlin, and the Future Generation Art Prize selection committee, and was named among Apollo magazine’s “40 Under 40 Thinkers in Europe.” In 2025, she was awarded an Honorary OBE for services to art.

Born in Washington, D.C., and based in London, Whitley is a Trustee of the Teiger Foundation and Sir John Soane’s Museum, and was a member of the London Mayor’s Commission on Diversity in the Public Realm, where she advised on the city’s public engagement with monuments, streets, and building names.